More gold for MIDAS with €250K tidal-storage project grant

Dutch province of Zeeland has provided €250,000 from its public fund to support the joint, large-scale, north-west European tidal energy and battery storage project called the MIDAS.

Subsidized by EU through its Interreg North West Europe program with almost €11 million, the MIDAS project involves international project consortium – with France as the lead project country – and includes major European research centers, storage, and tidal energy companies.

The overarching goal of the MIDAS project – short for Marine energy Integrated with smart Distribution and Storage – is to demonstrate the technical and financial feasibility of using tidal energy plus energy storage to provide reliable and renewable baseload energy.

This would make the sustainable tidal energy available at any time of the day and not only when the tide changes, as is currently the case – according to project developers.

The MIDAS project will be partly implemented at the Tidal Technology Center Grevelingendam (TTC-GD), where research is being carried out into the possibilities and upscaling of energy storage in the province of Zeeland.

Also taking part in the project is the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), whose spokesperson recently said for MarineEnergy.biz the project was ‘opening up further opportunities for EMEC in energy systems research and demonstration.’

Research is also being conducted into the possibilities of energy storage connection to the Zeeland province regional electricity grid operated by Enduris. By using stored renewable energy, the grid operator could optimize the transmission grid in the future and thus avoid overloading, the developers said.

The primary energy storage technology provider for the MIDAS project will be the UK-based company redT energy. As announced earlier, a 0.6MW – 3MWh redT flow machine system has been selected for the project.

The MIDAS project will also be joined by one of the leading tidal energy developers – the Edinburgh-based Atlantis Resources – that was selected as project consortium member by the Agence de développement pour la Normandie in France.

Other consortium members for the project, running from 2018 until 2021, include Innosea, Energy Systems Catapult and Zeeland Province.

The base load is the minimum amount of energy that must be produced to keep the electricity under tension. Currently, the base load is mainly produced by conventional coal and gas plants, while sustainable sources such as wind and solar energy are often used in peak demand for electricity.

One of the fourteen European transnational cooperation programs, the Interreg North-West Europe fosters collaboration with the goal of making Northwestern Europe a key economic player with high levels of innovation, sustainability and cohesion.